Fiction:First, the quirk. Julian Gough's publishers, Old Street, are releasing the two sequels to his new novel - Jude: Level 2 and Jude: Level 3 - over the internet, every Thursday for the next few months, before publishing an omnibus edition of all three instalments of the book next year.
Click on through, curious internet-browsers, to www.oldstreetpublishing.co.uk. Old Street's is clearly a risky publicity and publishing strategy, since the history of internet publishing and e-books is one paved with good intentions, errant nonsense, and utter embarrassments. Readers will perhaps recall Stephen King's pioneering attempt at e-book publishing a few years ago, The Plant, which, at just $1 per download proved to be a complete flop. Gough, compared to King, is hardly a household name, but then again each weekly instalment of Jude 2 and 3 does come free.
The question is, then: is what Gough is producing, in whatever format, at whatever cost, actually any good? Good is not perhaps the word. Jude: Level 1 is what one might call bonkers-tastic, displaying its bold and manifold eccentricities like a man wearing a character hat, cartoon-character socks, and a "hilarious" novelty tie: you either find the eccentricities endearing, or so infuriating you want to punch him.
Jude is a Tipperary orphan, who sets off on his 18th birthday on a quest to find his true parentage. He goes first to Galway, "That Republic of Possibilities, of Transformation, Danger, and Delight; that ageless merchant town, that 500-year-old City-State; the Port of Last Call for Columbus". In Galway, he falls in love. He then - eventually - proceeds to Dublin ("The whole fucking place is a lunatic asylum", remarks one character). But this is the very least of it.
GOUGH ISN'T WRITING a conventional novel at all - he's writing a kind of extended comic riff on the Quest theme in literature, in which the plot is merely an excuse for imparting insights, telling jokes and stories, and staging set-pieces. Characters are merely quips, ciphers, or caricatures. Thus, a dog called Agamemnon; and the mysterious Pat Sheeran, who has invented a technological Salmon of Knowledge; a certain Brünhilde DeValera; and a barely fictionalised Charles Haughey, "heroic leader of the Fianna Fáil Party, former Taoiseach, Celtic Chieftain of all the Gaels, gun- runner, phone-tapper, tax-dodger, fornicator, cute hoor and Saviour of Ireland".
Such high-jinkery and banter yields passages of great wit and brilliance, as when Pat Sheeran explains the meaning of religion: "An Operating System, or religion, is essentially a set of rules for processing the information the world throws at us. It is designed to give the system stability. Once you have the rules installed, you can communicate with others running the same set of rules, and even join together in faith-based networks or communities. Trying to communicate with anyone using a different set of rules may lead to incomprehension and conflict. In all key respects, Catholicism is an Operating System." But there are also, inevitably, lowlights, longueurs and numbing absurdities, as when Jude gets mistaken for Stephen Hawking, or ends up - don't ask - with his penis grafted onto his nose.
Gough is at his comic best when writing not merely surreally but satirically, as when he describes a themed Dublin pub: "Though indoors, we stood on a kind of galleon's deck, edged with bar counters. A little further on, this main deck became an indoor street, lined with large old vehicles leading past a Scottish Presbyterian chapel, toward the silken awnings of a Souk or Bazaar, above which were balconies and further floors, some lit with ultraviolet light, others according to a Japanese theme. Four or five floors above, hanging from the ceiling was a Viking longship packed with revellers". Readers of this paper may also be interested to note that on his various travels Jude meets the Car Ferry Critic of The Irish Times, who feel that the names of the ferries are lacking in "Mythic Import" and spend too much time in "British Waters".
The perfect car ferry, apparently, would carry only "Irish people, travelling the Dublin to Dublin route solely, and without leaving Irish territorial waters". This is funny. It is also, possibly, quite serious. Certainly, it endears.
Ian Sansom teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of the Mobile Library series of novels. His new book, The Enthusiast Poetry Field Guide, will be published by Quercus this Christmas.
Jude: Level 1 By Julian Gough Old Street Publishing, 180pp. £7.99